{"id":209387,"date":"2026-05-01T23:59:50","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T23:59:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thousands-in-us-to-join-no-school-no-work-no-shopping-may-day-protest-in-economic-blackout-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T23:59:50","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T23:59:50","slug":"thousands-in-us-to-join-no-school-no-work-no-shopping-may-day-protest-in-economic-blackout-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/thousands-in-us-to-join-no-school-no-work-no-shopping-may-day-protest-in-economic-blackout-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Thousands in US to join \u2018no school, no work, no shopping\u2019 May Day protest in economic blackout – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Walkouts, marches and other gatherings held for \u2018May Day Strong\u2019 demonstrations across the country
May Day protests across US draw huge crowds \u2013 in pictures<\/a>
Thousands have joined an economic blackout for International Workers\u2019 Day, as part of 3,500 \u201cMay Day Strong<\/a>\u201d events across the country today. Organizers have called for \u201cno school, no work, no shopping\u201d with walkouts, marches, block parties<\/a> and demonstrations held outside of institutions such as the New York Stock Exchange.
This afternoon in Manhattan, protesters from the youth-led Sunrise Movement chained themselves to the front of the stock exchange while more sat blocking the exits to the property. They were joined by about 100 protesters before being arrested and removed about an hour later. A small crowd remained, playing music and chanting: \u201cTax the rich!\u201d
Sunrise protesters also led demonstrations in other cities that ended in arrests. In Portland, Oregon, they occupied a Hilton hotel lobby<\/a> where Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials were allegedly staying, and in Minneapolis, Minnesota, six Sunrise protesters<\/a> were arrested for blocking a bridge.
Meanwhile, several San Francisco city officials<\/a> were arrested during a protest at San Francisco international airport in support of the airport workers\u2019 union picketing over wages and ICE\u2019s presence in airports.
May Day has long been an annual day of protest for the labor movement, and this year many active movements converged to demand no ICE and no war, and taxing the rich<\/a>. The May Day Strong coalition includes labor unions, immigrants rights groups, political organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, and the organizers behind the No Kings protests.
Earlier this morning, a group of Amazon workers, Teamsters and local politicians marched from the New York public library\u2019s main branch to Amazon\u2019s nearby corporate offices to demand the corporation cut its contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the DHS. In the nation\u2019s capital, protesters with the organization Free DC<\/a> shut down intersections across the city, holding handmade banners reading \u201cWorkers over billionaires\u201d and \u201cHealthcare not warfare\u201d.
Healthcare workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Chicago marched on an Amazon warehouse,<\/a> carrying a giant sign of owner Jeff Bezos\u2019 head. A group of protesters in Memphis, Tennessee<\/a>, blocked the entrance to Elon Musk\u2019s xAI datacenter by lying in the streets.
As the day went on, protests and marches \u2013 full of union workers, mariachi bands, students, teachers, politicians and more \u2013 commenced from the midwest to the west coast. Photos and footage of crowds filling streets in Los Angeles<\/a>, Washington DC<\/a>, Madison, <\/a>Wisconsin, and Raleigh, North Carolina,<\/a> spread on social media. So did protests in towns from the Village of Oak Creek<\/a>, Arizona, to Kalamazoo<\/a>, Michigan, and Frederick<\/a>, Maryland.
Friday\u2019s economic disruption builds on a similar coordinated effort out of Minnesota in January, when tens of thousands of Twin Cities residents took off<\/a> from school and work to flood the streets in protest of federal immigration agents storming the city.
Leah Greenberg of Indivisible, one of the main organizations behind No Kings, described the May Day<\/a> economic blackout as a \u201cstructure test\u201d for the movement.
\u201cWe are asking people to take a step into further exerting their power in all aspects of their lives \u2013 as workers, as students, as members of local organizing hubs,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s important as it builds muscles towards greater non-cooperation.\u201d
Teachers and students across the country also led the charge. In Portland, Oregon,<\/a> several hundred attendees joined a teachers\u2019 union rally. High schoolers in Kansas City, Missouri<\/a>, walked out of school to join the Missouri Workers Center and the Sunrise Movement Kansas City at a protest. And thousands of teachers and protesters marched through downtown Raleigh, North Carolina<\/a>, in what local outlet the News & Observer reported may be \u201cone of the biggest labor actions in the state\u2019s history\u201d. At least 22 North Carolina school districts closed over teachers taking off work to join the \u201cKids Over Corporations\u201d march.
\u201cAs educators, we feel a very real accountability to the young people in the families that we serve,\u201d Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and Illinois Federation of Teachers, said earlier this week<\/a>. \u201cWe want to connect people not just to the affordability crisis but the crisis of our institutions being marginalized in this moment and the impact on our young people.\u201d
Sanshray Kukutla, a student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and an organizer with the campus\u2019s Sunrise Movement chapter, helped coordinate a local walkout for students, teachers, workers and residents. \u201cWe\u2019re taking collective action to send a message to the billionaire class: it\u2019s our labor, our spending and our participation that keeps the whole system running, and if we don\u2019t work, they don\u2019t have profits,\u201d said Kukutla.
Amid the school walkouts, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, condemned Chicago\u2019s civic day of action on X, formerly Twitter<\/a>, calling it a \u201cdereliction of duty\u201d.
Organizers say the day of action is an effort to build toward a general strike, which was essentially outlawed through the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act and hasn\u2019t happened in the US since. As a workaround, Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers (UAW), has called for unions to work toward a general strike on 1 May 2028, by having existing union contracts expire in unison.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Walkouts, marches and other gatherings held for \u2018May Day Strong\u2019 demonstrations across the countryMay Day protests across US draw huge crowds \u2013 in picturesThousands have joined an economic blackout for International Workers\u2019 Day, as part of 3,500 \u201cMay Day Strong\u201d events across the country today. Organizers have called for \u201cno school, no work, no shopping\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":209388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-209387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-us","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}